Talk:Q-ship

Missing Criticism
When you read the article you can get the idea that Q-Ships were a perfectly legal, brilliant idea to counter the treat of german submarines. The british were certainly in desperation yet the usage of concealed warships was considered a warcrime by the maritime war of these days, which explains why it was "one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war." German submarines operated under the prize rules which demanded that every merchant vessel had to be stopped, it's cargo checked and only if it was transporting contraband it was allowed to be sunk, after the crew was on lifeboats in safe distance, usually combined with an SOS. Only then the ship was sunk by using the deck cannon to save precious torpedoes. It was the utopia of a civilized warfare without unnecessary casualities. The result of the Q-ship usage was that the war on sea got noteworthy brutalized on both sides, leading to the unconditional submarine warfare with submarines ignoring the prize rule by just firing without warning, out of paranoia to not make themselves a victim to Q-ships. The invention of Q-ships can be seen as a premise which might have been a main reason for the Lusitania incident that would follow in May 1915. Another example worth mentioning in this article were the Baralong incidents. The HMS Baralong sunk 2 submarines by sailing under US flag and thus appearing as a neutral ship. After U-27 was sunk every surviving german sailor, still swimming in the sea or on board of the Nicosian was shot by the crew of the Baralong under order of it's commanding officer Lieutenant Godfrey Herbert. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.108.151.179 (talk) 13:28, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree with this edit. Therefor I deleted one phrase in the lemma. --Orik (talk) 13:29, 12 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I am concerned by this criticism. If it is true, then the article definitely ought to be edited to say so.

IceDragon64 (talk) 20:10, 25 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I was about to write a similar criticism--if this was a war crime (and someone know which maritime treaty it violated) this is a *huge* oversight, one which arguably gives a different cast to the entire war (at least in terms of the U.S.'s entry into it). Historian932 (talk) 19:54, 3 April 2018 (UTC)


 * It's quite evidently british propaganda. It's all over Wikipedia, really. The english are often portrayed as the bad guys on non-english entries, but even there the truth is "being improved" in creative ways. The Q ships were a ruse of war designed to trick the germans into killing innocent civilians to sway public opinion against them; nothing more.

190.46.205.93 (talk) 22:44, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

If it was "illegal" (as against immoral etc.), you should state what article of international law it infringed. The German U-boats certainly didn't chivalrously save all the crew of merchant ships before sinking them, from early in the war. For instance, on 10 April 1915 the British steamer Harpalyce was torpedoed without warning by SM UB-4 with loss of life. The submarine fired torpedoes at 3 other ships at the same time, all without warning, and claimed all sunk, but only Harpalyce was lost. SM UB-4 was later sunk by a Q-ship. Criticism of the use of Q-ships could well be justified, naturally. But we need the proper references. As for the statement that its "illegality" explains why it was "one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war", that's clearly nonsense. It was a closely guarded secret for the obvious reason that the British didn't want the Germans to know about the decoy ships because they would have lost something of their effectiveness. I believe they did in fact become known to the Germans quite soon, from reports of surviving U-boats attacked by them, but that's another matter METRANGOLO1 (talk) 18:21, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

O, those chivalrous Germans! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.15.39.58 (talk) 07:36, 18 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Nice theory but it just isn't true. The U-boats were instructed to sink ships without warning *before* Q-ships. Q-ships was a response to unrestricted submarine warfare, not the other way round. The first Baralong incident was probably a war crime but ruse de guerre isn't generally, and also statistically crew from U-boats sunk by Q-ships actually had a better chance of surviving than those sunk by other methods. Fangz (talk) 11:59, 18 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Besides the Germans did the same thing. If you disguise your commerce raiders as neutral civilian craft, you can hardly complain about ships that did the same thing but targeting military vessels, as opposed to civilian ones. 82.2.239.38 (talk) 15:53, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

External links modified
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WAS Gold Star a Q-ship?
Although it was an armed merchant ship, that alone does not make it a Q ship, yet it is described as such both here and on its own Page. I am tempted to remove the paragraph all together. Can anyone find evidence that it was armed secretly, in order to attract surface attack by submarine?

IceDragon64 (talk) 19:50, 25 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I support removing Gold Star from this page. She was more like a spy ship rather than Q-ship. MKFI (talk) 18:08, 22 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Agree entirely. I've changed the description in the ship's page and will move the section to Spy ship article.Cosmicdense (talk) 00:15, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Naming
After Queenstown? I thought it was a bad pun on 'ship of the line' --- a queue-ship, geddit? 157.131.93.97 (talk) 19:58, 4 December 2019 (UTC)